“The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”

Socialist Party presidential candidate Norman Thomas


Thursday, December 02, 2010

Why is Bernanke not in a pillory in DC somewhere?

We are just now learning of the utter corruption, at American taxpayers' expense, associated with the Federal Reserve's role in doling bailout money.....UNBELIEVABLE!!!

From WashingtonPost -- The Fed launched emergency programs totaling $3.3 trillion in aid, a figure reached by adding up the peak amount of lending in each program.

Companies that few people would associate with Wall Street benefited through the Fed's program to ease the market for commercial paper, a form of short-term debt used by major corporations to fund their daily activities.

By the fall of 2008, credit had frozen across the financial system, including the commercial paper market. The Fed then purchased commercial paper issued by GE 12 times for a total of $16 billion. It bought paper from Harley-Davidson 33 times, for a total of $2.3 billion. It picked up debt issued by Verizon twice, totaling $1.5 billion.


The Fed bailed out General Electric 12 times and not once did NBC news, a subsidiary of GE, report it. The astonishing stupidity of anybody who still trusts NBC do deliver honest news is......well, astonishing.

The Fed bailed out Harley-Davidson 33 times? Are you kidding me? Harley-Davidson might as well be GM or Chrysler now. That whooshing sound you hear is my respect for HD going down the toilet.

Additionally, hundreds of millions of dollars taken from taxpayers went to bailout foreign banks too. The Fed has become the international bank of the world, using our money to prop up the businesses of the country-club buddies of the Fed board members.

Maybe I'm missing something here because I don't fully understand the need for the Fed, composed of private, unelected citizens with little or no oversight, who have vested interests in the profitability of certain banks and Wall Street firms, to be in charge of US monetary policy. Furthermore, I don't really know who oversees their actions. If anybody can explain why any of this is OK, I'd gladly withdraw my outrage.

2 comments:

David said...

Corruption.Of course HD was bailed out back in the 1980s as the Asian motorcyle companies brought their "A" game while there wasn't enought dry-sorb to sop up all the oil from the leaking crankcases over at HD. For this reason and many others I will never purchase a HD motorcyle. GM recently joined this club although their lack of viable offerings pretty much turned me off after about 1980. Suddenly GM seems to be producing innovative automobiles but not for me.

ed said...

I guess the Chevy Volt($40,000 before taxpayer funded rebate) is innovative in that never before has an American car, offered so few benefits(other than smug self-righteousness), at such great a cost.

"Benefits": outrageous price tag, 70 mile range, expensive replacement batteries, charging stations harder to find than Pauli Shore's career.

I'm now a lifelong Ford and Toyota guy.